Electronic devices and in particular semiconductor devices are often known to be susceptible to wearout effects. A wearout effect in this context is understood to be any long-term variation of the properties of the electronic device that is produced by operating the device. Examples of such wearout phenomena include negative bias temperature instability (NBTI), time-dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB), hot carriers injection (HCI), and electromigration (EM). Although the mechanisms behind these phenomena are not necessarily fully understood, they are of practical importance, since they may require adapting operating parameters of the electronic device during the lifetime of the device.
For example, wearout effects may manifest themselves by an increase of latency in integrated circuits during the lifetime of the integrated circuit. US 2008/0036487 A1 therefore proposes detecting signal generation latency and generating a wearout response. The wearout response can take a variety of different forms such as reducing the operating frequency, increasing the operating voltage, and others.